On July 25, the United States Air Force used a directed energy weapon to destroy a meteor that could have annihilated Thule Air Force Base, the US’s northernmost early warning station, says a White House source speaking under condition of anonymity. News of the cosmic incursion was hidden from the public until August 1, when Twitter user “Rocket Ron,” a NASA Jet Propulsion employee, tweeted, “A fireball was detected over Greenland on July 25, 2018 by US Government sensors at an altitude of 43.3 km. The energy from the explosion is estimated to be 2.1 kilotons.”

The Air Force and NASA, however, desperately tried to conceal the incident, and even imposed a gag order on military personnel at Thule. Anyone violating that order, our source said, would have received judicial punishment in accordance with the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Likewise, civilian scientists and military contractors were compelled to sign non-disclosure agreements.

There were two primary reasons for maintaining a blanket of secrecy.

“This was a large and potentially deadly meteor. Had it struck, it would have destroyed Thule and killed every living being there. If it hadn’t been destroyed, that just might have happened. Its angle of decent was steep enough that a large part of the rock would’ve survived atmospheric reentry. If this happened elsewhere, somewhere without defensive countermeasures, an entire city the size of Manhattan could have been obliterated.”

For example, a large meteor struck Chelyabinsk, Russia in 2013, causing damage to nearly 7,000 buildings and injuring 1,500 people.

Although NASA now insists that the rock vaporized on contact with the atmosphere, our source says that is a carefully crafted cover story. His version of events paints a very different picture. On the afternoon of the 25th, Department of Defense sensors at Thule detected a space borne projectile travelling at 54,000 mph. Early warning radar ruled out a Russian ICBM and identified the target as a meteor nearly 800 feet in diameter. With only seconds to act, the Air Force opted against using conventional interceptor missiles and instead fired a high-energy beam from an experimental laser to heat the meteor to the point of fracture. A moment later, the rock exploded with the force of a 2 kiloton nuclear weapon, shattering it into a million tiny piece of harmless shrapnel.

“There was no guarantee it would work, but it was their best option. We got lucky. If detection came two seconds later, the base would have been destroyed. There is concern many more meteors, larger and more dangerous, are lurking out there and could at any moment strike the planet. The government doesn’t want people panicking—that’s why no one was told,” our source said.